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Cute little houses of candy and cookies - but these will last for many years, to decorate your tree, to use as package tags or fridge ornaments. You can print some templates here, if you like: Templates | ||
 Tools and Materials: Clay - small amounts of light brown, white, translucent, tiny amounts of green, red, orange, yellow, pink, purple. Genesis or acrylic paint, white. Opaque and Translucent Liquid Sculpey. Sandpaper, tissue blade, scalpel or x-acto knife, small Kemper round cutter, white plastic eraser, fine tweezers, tile or cooking surface. Fine point applicators optional. Glossy glaze for candy.
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 Print and cut out the templates (above) or make your own. Cut out the clay pieces and press firmly with rough sandpaper to texture the "cookies." Put them in to bake and start on the candies. Angie Scarr has an excellent lesson for making citrus slices. The link is under the "Sweetcorn" section. You won't need to make very much - a cane of a half-ounce or so each will be more than enough.
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 First the "Necco wafers," one of my childhood favorites. Mix a half-teaspoon each of several pastel colors - here I've made pink, peach, yellow and green. Roll them into skinny skakes about the same diameter as a round toothpick. On the same tray, roll some "threads" of white clay - after they're cured, we'll cut them into sticks for the lollipops. Cure for 15 minutes at the manufacturer's recommended temperature.
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 After curing, line up the pastel sticks and slice them very thinly with a firm, sharp tissue blade. You'll get hundreds of Necco Wafers from four 2" sticks of color. Set aside. Cut the white threads about 3/8" to 1/2" long and set them aside for the next step. Mix up several half-teaspoons of tinted translucent clay. I like green, orange, red and purple. These will be the lollipops in the next few steps.
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 Take each of the tinted translucents and roll them through #5 or #6 on the pasta machine (pretty thin) then roll them firmly onto a ceramic tile to stick the clay to the tile and smooth the surface. With the 1/4" Kemper round cutter, cut several disks into the little sheets of clay. Peel away the excess clay, place a lollipop stick into the center of each disk and press down with a white plastic eraser or similar tool. Cure, cool, set aside.
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 Let's make some red whips - yum! Mix some red into translucent clay to get a nice strong red that still has that translucent quality. Roll in the pasta machine on about #5 to make a long strip, then stick the strip down on a tile. Trim the front edge to get a straight line, then cut strips that are about as wide as the clay is thick. Peel it carefully off of the blade.
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 Twist the strip into a spiral - tack the ends of the strip down to the tile with your fingers so that it won't come untwisted in the curing. Continue to cut strips and twist them and affix them to the tile. Make four or five - these are pretty on these little houses.
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 Cure and cool. Nip off the squished ends of the strips and set the strips aside with your other little candies. If you've made citrus canes, roll them down to about 3/16" in diameter and cure a two-inch section of each. Cure and when cool, slice thinly and set those slices aside, too. We're getting quite a collection of candies!
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 A candy collection isn't complete without candy canes, starlight mints and those beautiful twisted spiral lollipops - we always wanted one of those when we went to the boardwalk, didn't we? Take a small lump of white and roll it into a short tube. Use tiny amounts of bright colors to make threads to stripe along the length of the white tube. I use four colors and place two threads of each around the tube.
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 Press the threads well into the surface of the white tube, so that when you start rolling the tube, the colors won't spread side to side quite as much and completely obliterate the white. Roll the tube on a smooth surface, and divide the resulting snake when the length becomes unmanageable. Save one 2" section with straight lines which to cure and cut into lozenges. Twist the rest into long, thin snakes.
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 Save a couple of straight lengths of the spiralled snake from which to cut candy sticks. Shape the remainder into tiny candy canes and lollipops. Turn the end of the snake back on itself and continue to make a spiral about 3/16" - 1/4" across. Flatten with the plastic eraser, push a white lollipop stick into the center and smooth that with the eraser again. Cure and cool. |
 After curing and cooling, you can cut the lozenges with a sharp, firm tissue blade. On the right, you see the tiny little "starlight" mints that result from using only red threads of color around the white tube. This combination is nice as candy canes, as is a combination of green and red threads. Use whatever combinations you like.
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 Okay, now we have a virtual candy store. Almost good enough to eat. I haven't been concerned with making these pieces in any particular scale, but you could certainly do so, if you wanted to. We have a nice mix of different candies and we can start decorating the little house ornaments. |
 Apply opaque Liquid Sculpey in the areas of your house in which you will want to attach candies. Get those fine-nose tweezers out - you won't believe how easy this will be with tweezers, especially if you need bifocals - which I apparently already do. *sigh!* Cut the red whips and long candy strips to fit into places where you want them to fit.
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 Keep a little puddle of TLS handy and another puddle of opaque LS. Dip the translucent lollipops into the opaque white LS to highlight their translucency. Use the TLS in which to dip the other candies before placing them onto the house. You can also glue the pieces on, but the liquid clay has the advantage of not drying out while you're trying to work on it.
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 When the house is decorated the way that you want it to be, cure it for half an hour at the manufacturer's recommended temperature, bumping the temp up to 300º for the last ten minutes to clarify and strengthen the liquid clay. When cured and cooled, apply glaze to the candies for a little extra realism. You can sprinkle fine glitter on the "snow" areas for a little sparkle. (This picture is a much larger file so that you can better see the details.) Drill a hole in the top to accommodate an ornament hook or ribbon. |
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Happy Holidays!
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